One of the earliest international Russian climatologists was Mikhail Ivanovich Budyko who started studying climate science in 1942, the WMO claim that

he was the first to warn the humankind of the unavoidable nature of global climate change resulting from industrial activities. Mikhail Budyko’s 1972 quantitative forecast of average global air temperature increase resulting from rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere proved to be highly accurate at the end of the XX century 1

I spoke with a Russian colleague at another UK university about a small experiment to join the overall climate scientists twitter list set up by Katherine Hayhoe. I had initially contacted Katherine Hayhoe via twitter because she didn’t have climate scientists in Russia on the list and was interested.

This experiment is primarily to highlight research news from Russian climate scientists without them all needing to set up and use individual twitter accounts. Whilst climate change is not my special environmental interest area, I do feel strongly about trying to help others join any discussions – especially when a social network is used but there are no representatives from the Russian academic scientific community who are carrying out their research in Russia.

This will never be a big activity even if we continue after an experiment as climate scientists do speak to each other very effectively through their own international informal networks but this is another public outlet which may produce some interactions or scientists finding some researchers that they may not come across elsewhere. Especially yet to be published ones from any country. Or interested members of the public.

I have now learnt from being part of the DICATS committee experience that starting very small would have been better not least because of academic staff increasing workloads. I know of one climate scientist in Russia who may be interested and my colleague knows of others. So we may start with about four climate scientists from both social and physical sciences.

Probably over a month. We will discuss whether to connect latest research news or discussions onto a site that offers an RSS feed. I have set up a quick demonstration: https://russiaclimate.science.blog/

I will initially use Rssground to auto publish to twitter and see how that works out, you get once every 24 hours with a free account and this worked fine posting with cyrillic characters from a test post on my blog earlier day.

Creating a bot which could create or translate posts would be interesting but would be a large project that I don’t currently have time to either write a bid for funding, source another way and adapt but if anyone is interested, please contact me.

A person can’t get rid of an animal in an arbitrary manner for it must be transferred either to a new owner or an animal shelter.

Animals can’t be slayed under any pretense, organization of animal fights, setting animals on other creatures and humans are all forbidden, the law reads. Also, propaganda of cruel treatment of animals as well as keeping wild animals in apartments, private houses and land plots, are all banned.

The law forbids special zoos of a “contact type” often found in malls as well as keeping animals in bars, cafes and restaurants

Fadia Daibes-Murad used to be the legal expert for the Palestinian Water Authority. She was also a humanitarian Edberg award winning researcher writing about international water laws. She was killed in a car crash in Palestine which some people believe was a murder. Based on the genocidal intentions of the Israeli right, US republicans and some US Democrats, would now seem much more likely.

The legal case for shared Palestinian groundwater and aquifer ownership has a lot of evidence to support it legally, scientifically, historically and geographically.

Her book and also an interview with Fadia from 2009. She didn’t give up and it’s not too late even now, although total inaction from the international political community is unhelpful.

From my nice relatively uninformed cosy British seat this looks terrible environmentally whilst on the other side – if they don’t do it, someone else will which is equally terrible and even worse from an international security perspective.

I don’t believe in climate change denial caused by fossil fuels in a STEM rich country who are also being already affected by it but with economic dependencies, I wouldn’t expect them to be shouting loudly from the rooftops about it or welcoming a report that suggests self-annihilation. Would you in the same position?

Any scientific evidence from Russia about the Arctic in particular deserves international consideration and critique where applicable. I don’t know how much that is happening.

Personally instead of immediate fossil fuel divestment, I think a UN specialist scientific and economic Commission could specifically look at countries where fossil fuel dependencies and interdependencies obscure innovative thinking about alternative energies and ways of capturing, storing and distribution if we are going to reach the 1.5C target by 2020. Having grand scientific challenges with funded prizes such as great discoveries in the past may help. A commission if wanted must investigate and act quickly because poorer nations do not have time.

The UN conference was unable to agree on the modalities of dealing with it.

Saturday night in Katowice ended the UN conference on climate change. The results of the two-week session adopted the guide on adaptation to climate change and a set of rules the implementation of the agreement — but they describe only the reporting countries on the implementation of commitments, climate measures and costs. Agree about the economic mechanisms, and to convince countries to take enhanced commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions UN delegates are unable.

The most important achievement of the UN conference on climate in Katowice was the approval of the rules of the Paris agreement and guidance on adaptation to climate change. Rules determine how countries should report on measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the actions of adaptation, allocation of funds and their spending — will have to do it every five years, in 2023 and 2028 respectively. “The rules define the procedure and the reporting structure, monitoring the global situation, however, the action of the rules does not prescribe,” says the participant of the conference, the Director of the program “Climate and energy” WWF Russia Alexei Kokorin.

Success in the extension of country commitments the conference has not reached. Despite data on the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in the world in 2017 (after three years of stabilization) and a poor prognosis for 2018, plans to increase the obligations stated only Canada, several EU countries and Ukraine. Current voluntary commitments by countries and their measures of low-carbon development output the world to increase global temperature more than 3 ° C by the end of the century. To keep warming to within 2 º C, it is necessary to increase the obligations three times, and to limit to 1.5 ° C — five times, according to the report of experts of the UN Programme on the environment. New applications on a voluntary commitment, however, is only expected in September 2019 at the climate summit in new York will be hosted personally by the UN Secretary-General antónio Guterres.

The delegation of the Russian Federation (until Russia agreement not ratified) at the UN conference for the first time headed the new special presidential envoy for climate Ruslan Edelgeriev, who succeeded Alexander Bedritsky. Mr. Edelgeriev confirmed that Russia was preparing to ratify — is working on the concept of state regulation of greenhouse gas emissions (see “Kommersant” on 4 December), long-term low-carbon development strategy and the plan of adjustment of the economy to climate change.

The Ministry has dispatched on the coordination in departments the new version of the draft law on the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions

Support during conference received the climate funds — Germany and Japan will allocate them for $1.5 billion, France, Finland and Norway confirmed that ready to ensure the operation of the Green climate Fund in the years 2020-2023. The world Bank announced that in five years will be allocated to climate projects $200 billion and will begin financing of projects of adaptation to climate change. However, the requirements of countries to access these funds has caused conflicts, tightening the end of the conference on the day. The demands for Brazil’s access to money has a new mechanism of sustainable development did not give the parties to agree on the economy of his work (see reference) — the solution to this issue is postponed for a year, and instead of Brazil, the UN conference will take Chile.

Not so developed, to refuse money

Access to funds climate funds triggered a series of conflicts, tightening the end of the UN conference for the whole day. So, the Turkish delegation insisted on leaving the group of countries with developed and transition economies due to the unavailability of her funds international climate funds the United Nations (for the same reason Turkey will not ratify the agreement itself). The same problem at the conference spoke the representatives of Belarus. Note that Russia because of sanctions is also experiencing difficulties with access to international green financing (primarily funds of the international development banks and Global environment facility), which is a serious obstacle to decarbonizing the economy, said the representative of “Business Russia” and “Russian partnership for climate protection,” Oleg Pluzhnikov.

The second conflict was also financial: the delegation of Brazil insisted to allow access to a new market mechanism of the SS (the steady development mechanism) projects launched during the Kyoto Protocol (then most of these green funds received Brazil, China and India). The firm position of Brazil not given to harmonize the rules of operation of market mechanisms — the question was postponed for a year. Also, the country refused to host the UN conference on climate in December 2019 — it was moved to Chile. However, such contradictions have already become traditional for climate negotiations: emerging economies require differentiated approach depending on the level of development and achieve the mandatory inclusion of financial assistance itself in voluntary commitments by developed countries under the Paris agreement.